


the five great loves of richie tozier's life

by melliesgrant



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: F/M, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, ends w reddie but still focuses on his other relationships!!, gay slurs, richie centric!!!!!!!, some kissing some cursing some inferred raunchiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 07:05:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12337875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliesgrant/pseuds/melliesgrant
Summary: the five people richie tozier fell in love with and will always be in love with





	the five great loves of richie tozier's life

i. bill denbrough

he’s a little boy and he never believed in cooties. he’s in elementary school and he has to use glasses that are too big for him to see and he looks weird with one of his front teeth missing and the other grown in and far too big for his face. 

he’s richie tozier and he has a crush on his best friend, bill denbrough.

they’re young and they spend their days in bill’s backyard playing with he-man dolls and cars and transformers. they wrestle in the mud and change into pajamas as mrs. denbrough washes their dirty clothes. 

they have sleepovers every night and are in the same classes at derry elementary, and while they spend their time saying ‘no girls allowed’ in their games and gagging if a girl gets her cooties on them, richie seems unfazed. he fakes it so he doesn’t seem weird, but he doesn’t understand cooties and why they’re so bad. he doesn’t understand why the rest of the boys don’t want kisses and touches from girls, because he finds that idea quite appealing

he also doesn’t understand why a girls touch is so repulsive, but when the boys in his class wrestle and touch it’s fine. he’s confused what’s right or wrong and how he should ask, and he’s confused when henry bowers punches him for holding bill’s hand at recess one day. 

richie acts strong and fine but when he goes back to bill’s house he can’t stop crying. he just wanted to hold his best friends hand, what’s so wrong with that? he could feel the bruise on the side of his face forming and he wants bill to kiss it to make it better.

but he doesn’t speak. he’s ashamed, he feels guilty and like he’s done something wrong. he was called queer and fag and words he doesn’t understand, but if it was something he was going to get punched over it must be bad.

he doesn’t know what to do, but he’s comforted by bill’s hugs and bill’s mother saying that he can sleepover.

he doesn’t know what his feelings mean but he has a gut reaction to it all and he doesn’t know what to do. his stomach feels queasy but he doesn’t feel nauseous, and he feels like his heart is fluttering and he wants to do what he sees parents doing with bill. he wants to go around holding his hand and kissing him, and that’s the extent of what he knows about relationships but he wants it all with his best friend. 

he wants that stuttering boy with the big blue eyes and auburn brown hair. he is his best friend and his first crush, thus the first great love of his life.

that night after he finishes crying and bill’s mom cleans the scrapes from when he fell and gives him ice for his bruise, he kisses bill on the cheek.

it’s small and chaste and just a small pucker of richie’s pink lips on bill’s fair skin, and it means the world to a young richie tozier. 

bill pulls away quickly with some shock on his face, but he doesn’t do anything and he’s more confused than anything. “are y-y-you okay r-r-richie?” he stuttered his way through the question, his prepubescent face contorted in confusion.

richie nodded his head quickly and looked away. “i’m fine, thanks bill.” 

the boys fall asleep in bill’s bed and go to school the next day like nothing ever happened. 

he doesn’t hold bill’s hand again and when he goes home he asks his parents what the words henry spitted out to him meant.

they’re gay slurs and he learns that’s a bad thing, that a boy his age shouldn’t be thinking such things and he should stick with girls.

he pushes his crush away and they stay best friends, but he can never forget his very first crush.

ii. beverly marsh

he’s older now and in the age where cooties are no longer a thing, rather all the boys are desperate to be kissed and touched by a girl. 

the most popular one for this is beverly marsh, a poor girl with clothes that never fit and breasts that haven’t fully come in yet. they’re thirteen and going through puberty, everyone is lying and letting their hormones run wild, and beverly is a victim of this.

richie heard the rumors of her and didn’t know what to believe (especially since most came from henry and his goons), but he was nice when he met her anyway.

she was smoking on a bench and playing with a yoyo, doing tricks richie wished he could do but never was able to, and he approaches her for the first time. he asks her for a cigarette and a light and he sits with her while the two smoke, far too young to be doing so but doing it anyway, and she tries to teach him the tricks but the string just gets wrapped around his arms and tangled in his fingers. 

she laughs at him and smoke comes out with it, and he notices how pretty she is. red hair and fair skin, blue eyes and pink lips, and he knows why so many boys in his class want her.

but she’s cool and she’s nice and she shares her smokes, so he asks her if she wants to see a movie with her and she says yes. he pays for her ticket and neither of them are sure if it’s a date or not, but they go in and get popcorn and spend the rest of the day together. 

they become good friends and rumors spread that they’re fucking, because that’s the type of thing that happens to beverly marsh and the people that hang out with her. 

he holds her when she cries about it and he feels that this must have been how bill felt back when he cried in his arms. 

he pets down her flaming red hair and holds her until she stops crying, and takes her down to the quarry to smoke and distract her from it all. they don’t talk about the rumors the rest of the day and richie promises her that he’ll always be there for her. he tells her that he doesn’t care about the rumors or what it means to hang out with her, that he’ll be her friend no matter what.

she wipes away one last tear and gives him a peck on the lips. it’s both their first kiss and they both taste like smoke and nicotine, and she smells like detergent and the flowery shampoo she uses. 

it doesn’t go any further than that first kiss, but when they leave he’s still blushing and it’s hard to cover up the red of his cheeks on his pale skin. 

they continue to go out and it’s a stereotypical middle school relationship, holding hands and seeing movies, but never anything more. they share a few pecks that leaves richie dizzy but never go any father. it’s his first relationship and he thinks he’s in love because of it. 

of course he doesn’t know if it’s really love or not, but everyone thinks they’re in love when they’re thirteen and kissing a girl and holding her hand.

he never says it though, it makes it too serious, and he’s too prideful to say it first. he can’t risk the embarrassment of saying it first and her not saying it back, and he’s afraid of saying it when he doesn’t really mean it.

he’s an immature boy who makes immature jokes, and he’s thirteen and he can’t solve his own feelings.

they never make it official but it eventually ends, they drift apart when it comes to the touchy things, and it’s unsaid but they agree to stay friends. their hands no longer linger in each others embrace, and those dizzying kisses go away and richie doesn’t miss it too much. 

she becomes one of his best friends but he won’t forget what they had. she was his first kiss and his first unofficial relationship and his best friend, and he loves her for that.

iii. veronica grogan

veronica grogan is his first high school relationship and first ‘official’ girlfriend. they had gone to school together their entire lives but never really talked until they had biology together freshmen year. 

they’re paired together as lab partners for the first semester of biology and richie uses his new founded good looks thanks to puberty and his shitty flirting skills on the girl.

it’s all immature and silly and any other girl would roll their eyes and flip him off, but ronnie grogan laughs hysterically and takes it all as a joke. she never takes him too seriously, and even laughs when they’re dissecting a frog and he picks it up to make it ‘dance’.

she’s a pretty girl but she isn’t gorgeous, she has brown hair that’s wavy and a bit frizzy, and it’s obvious she tries her hardest to brush it down but by the end of the day retreats to putting it into a braid. she has brown eyes to match and thin pink lips, and an elven nose that richie finds adorable.

he develops a bit of a crush as time goes on, and it’s obvious that she has one. she knows it and he knows it, he can tell as she blushes at all his jokes and she wears his glasses to tease him. he can tell when he walks down the hall with bill and bev and he catches her looking at him while talking to her friend (she quickly looks away, hoping not to be caught staring).

beverly asks richie what he thinks about it and he says he doesn’t know, but he catches himself thinking about her before he goes to bed and eventually all the time. 

it’s in november when he realizes he has a crush on ronnie, and he immediately asks her out. she says yes and that is the beginning of the veronica grogan and richie tozier freshmen year love story.

they go out on the cold november nights with mittens and scarves, and he buys them hot chocolate to get warm while they take walks in the park and walk past that paul bunyan statue he used to be so afraid of. 

he takes her to the school christmas dance in december, and she’s wearing a blue dress for the season and her frizzy hair is straightened down. richie’s wearing a rented suit that’s a bit too big, and his hair is in desperate need of a haircut but he didn’t have time to get one. 

they slow dance all night and at the end they kiss, and by the end of the night he is proud to say he had his first make out session.

him and ronnie make it through the year doing the same exact thing. they go on regular dates to the movies or out to eat, they have bio and even when they are no longer lab partners they find a way to work together again, and they make out and have some over the clothes action (never any farther, ronnie isn’t ready and richie is secretly scared).

it’s nothing exciting, but it’s  _something_. it’s a real relationship that can thrive without drama and bullshit and anything else richie is so used to experiencing. it’s almost too simple, and richie isn’t used to it. he’s used to having crushes on a boy he shouldn’t be liking, or kissing a girl that comes to him when she’s been bullied, not a regular girl that makes him feel like a regular guy.

it feels like a filler relationship, one you’re in just to be in but not for the long run. it’s the relationship you have to teach you about relationship, to teach you how to kiss and how to care, and prepare you for that person who does matter.

and he realizes he shouldn’t be doing this anymore. he shouldn’t be in a relationship with her if that’s what his thoughts are, if she likes him more than he likes her. he likes her too much to do that to her, so he ends it. 

they don’t stay friends but they stay civil, they smile at each other in the hallway and she laughs at his jokes in bio.

she moves on and starts to date eddie corcoran, and he’s okay with that. 

she taught him how to be in a relationship, and he kind of loves her for that.

iv. stanley uris

he’s all curly brown hair and a bit short for his age, and he’s sexy and cute and the opposite of richie tozier.

richie is now seventeen and a junior in high school, he still has his big glasses but he’s grown into his teeth, and he’s really tall which has gotten him a lot of attention.

and this is how he meets stan uris.

stan uris who is sixteen and his head reaches richie’s lips (perfect to kiss his forehead), and he’s bullied by henry bowers for being jewish.

richie didn’t see why that was something to bully someone over, but henry bowers seemed to think it was. that’s why he had stanley’s face pushed in the mud, yelling slurs richie had never heard of until he asked stan what they meant.

so he defends the boy, which results in him getting a beating from the older boy as well, but now at least the both of them are beaten and bruised and richie can’t think of a better way to meet stan uris (he’s his knight in shining armor).

he had seen him around before, he’s a year younger and he seems to have grown into himself. he’s short and sweet and wears khaki and striped shirts, but his body is graceful and beautiful and richie has caught himself staring at the boy for a bit too long sometimes. 

he just can’t help it, looking at those brown eyes and those curls he wanted to wrap around his fingers and pull on when he was kissing him.

he had to shake his head though, still afraid of his feelings for boys ever since his crush on bill back when he was a child, and even though being gay is more accepted in this day and age he was still afraid.

especially since he wouldn’t call himself gay, because he still liked girls so he didn’t know what that made him or what that meant.

not that it mattered, because now he was walking stanley uris home, the both of them covered in mud, with stanley promising to help clean him up.

(he’s never been more excited)

stan’s been ranting on and on about how much he hates this, how dirty he is and how long it will take to get the mud out of his hair and out from under his fingernails, and he seems to shake as he speaks and richie isn’t sure what to do.

so he makes a joke that gets a glare from stan, and they walk the rest of the way to stan’s house in silence.

but things get better from there.

they change out of their messy clothes and richie borrows some of stan’s, which is much to small for him, making both the boys laugh at the shirt that looked like a crop top and the sweats that went far too high above his ankle.

he helps stan was the mud out of his hair and stan helps richie wash it out of his, and he laughs and screams as richie whips his wet hair around like a dog. stan says he hates him as he laughs, and richie bites his lip and thinks stan’s laugh is so glorious. he asks stan if they can hang out again later. stan says yes.

so richie trades in stan’s small clothes for his now clean ones, and departs stan’s house with a smile and a promise to see him in school, and stan gives a snarky remark back about how he doesn’t want to see him (but he’s smiling the whole time).

so that’s how it starts, it’s talking in the hallway briefly to small talk to full conversations, and then they’re making plans outside of school and they’re going to the movies and richie is spending the night and eating his mothers food (and loving it), and somehow along the line stan becomes one of his best friends.

well, he becomes all of his friends friends. he’s integrated into the group and suddenly it’s him, bill, bev, her boyfriend ben, mike, and stan. 

and stan and richie start to date in secret. 

it’s all secret kisses in the libraries and sleepovers filled with sleepless nights, and following stan around as he bird watches and kissing his neck, and holding his hand in the darkness of a movie theater where henry and his goons can’t beat them senseless.

and it’s all love.

and this time richie thinks it’s really love, because when he sleeps over at stan’s and kisses him goodnight and holds him in his arms he thinks it’s love. 

and he takes him to junior prom and they slow dance under the fake stars in the school gym, and richie’s hands are on stan’s waist and stan’s head is on his shoulder, and richie whispers he loves him in his ear and stan whispers it back.

and they last for another two years, until richie has to go off to college and stan ends things there.

and richie misses him but he thinks it is for the best.

but stanley uris is his first love and still his best friend, and that’s all that counts.

v. eddie kaspbrak

richie’s in college now and he’s finally moved on from stan uris, and they’ve found a way to be friends.

richie feels like a new person, slightly matured and he’s substituted his glasses with contacts, but he still has his crude sense of humor and gangly limbs that makes him attractive in an awkward way.

and this is how he meets eddie kaspbrak.

he’s moving into his dorms and his parents finally left (he kept insisting he wanted to do it himself but they wouldn’t let him), and he drops a box on the boy across the hall. he’s small and a freshmen too and he’s directly across from him, and richie realizes his life will be hell if he’s already managed to piss off his neighbor.

he drops a box filled with spoons and forks and knives and other kitchen necessities and he hears the smaller boy shriek (he notices he’s shorter than stanley, which he didn’t even think was possible), and he bends over to pick his box back up.

he apologizes quickly and tries to make a joke out of it, and the boy responds with a witty comment that leaves him speechless, and he thinks that this will be either the best or the worst thing to ever happen to him. 

(it’s the best)

so that’s how it all starts, with bickering and hatred from one end of the hallway, and it soon turns friendly. richie always saw it as friendly but his neighbor, who he learned was named eddie, did not. for him it was a relationship that started out as hatred and turned to something more.

but this was richie’s story, not eddie’s.

so they talk, and their bickering stops having venom and it begins to have smiles, and richie notices how cute the other boy is. he’s short and slightly tan and his hair curls when it gets too long, and richie thinks (oh boy do those lips look soft) that his outfits are ridiculously cute and the boy is overall so adorable he just wants to pick him up and cuddle him all night.

that’s when the bickering turns to flirting.

richie flirts and flirts and makes crude comments and jokes about the boys mother, and eddie rolls his eyes and hides his blush and returns the wit with jokes of disinterest that both can see through as complete and utter bullshit.

and it isn’t until the first time they meet outside of their sacred hallway when something happens. 

richie was always apart of the party scene, going to frat parties or house parties or any that he heard of, but he had never seen the infamous eddie kaspbrak there until that night. 

that night when he just looked so delectably cute richie  _had_ to talk to him, so he did. eddie was leaning against a wall with a red solo cup in hand and an annoyed look on his face as he looked down at his feet, which made it perfect for richie to sneak up on him. six feet tall he had to look down at eddie, and he rested an arm on the side of eddie on the wall and spoke in his ear so he could hear him through the noise of the music and voices all blended together. 

eddie looked up and richie had never seen him upclose before, he had never realized he had such beautiful big brown eyes, and freckles scattered across his face subtly, and perfectly kissable lips. 

and by the end of the night he knew what eddie kaspbrak tasted like.

and that was the beginning of the rest of his life with eddie.

that kissing turned to dating and that dating turned to a relationship and that turned to moving in together, and somehow the two boys found themselves helplessly in love with their opposite

eddie was all clean and healthy and always safe and richie was immature and dirty and always breaking the rules.

but none of that shit mattered when eddie was in richie’s arms and running his hand through his hair and the world seemed to disappear around them. and richie loves to tickle eddie and wake him up with kisses and get into fights and do everything regular couples do.

because he is madly in love with eddie, and it isn’t a little crush or a first time love or a filler story or a boy he was going to lose eventually. it was the greatest love of his life and the one that was going to matter, because it was the one that would last forever.

eddie kaspbrak was the love of richie tozier’s life, but none of that erased who he loved before.


End file.
